Off to my dad's retirement party...

I was 2-years-old when my parents became Christians. Before that, my dad would have been voted: "most likely to bring and drink all the beer," and my mom would have been voted: "most likely to steal joey's beer and then do something stupid on a dare!" You should have seen their classmates faces at their 10-year-reunion when Wild Joey was introduced as "Pastor Joe." What a hoot!

After his time in the army and a brief stop in Redmond, my dad moved our family back to their hometown, Roseburg, Oregon, where Steve Reischke (sp?) saw the words "suckers" stamped on my parents' foreheads. He snagged them to be youth leaders, and they loved it. That first youth group in Roseburg was an amazing group of fun kids, who loved jesus and loved spending time with each other. They also loved spending time with our family. Don't tell anybody, but that Roseburg group was my all-time favorite. Perhaps it was the people, or my age, or just that it wasn't a paid gig. It was fun to be a teenager in grade-school. When asked what we did that weekend, I'm guessing my third grade teacher wasn't expecting, "we porked out on free (kind of even stolen) pizza, talked about boys, then TPed Jack Hinkle's room!

After a few years of full-time volunteer work, my parents completely lost their minds, quit their jobs, sold the house, rented a house sight-unseen, and moved us up to Portland to enroll in Multanoma Bible school and take a job the required them both to work full time for a single part-time paying youth pastor job. Talk about a leap of faith!

Just a couple weeks ago, my dad retired from 35 years of youth work. I was incredibly proud to see all the lives he (and my mom) had touched and changed. I'll continue the story of their work on my next blog, but I wanted to at least get this first part out and say thank you to all of those who honored my parents at their party in Roseburg. Plus, if you missed that party, you'll have a second chance; my friend, Tanna and I are going to host a second party coming up next month here at my house. We will keep you posted on time and date.

Marilyn played a gorgeous arrangement of "Thank you" at the party. Although it was instrumental, most of us knew the lyrics. The main words say, "thank you for giving to the Lord; I am a life changed. Thank you for giving to the Lord. I am so glad you gave..."